Modern General Ledger custom reports include zero-balance accounts
under review
J
Julia Scott
Has anyone found a workaround for this?
When I open a standard Modern General Ledger report, it automatically excludes zero-balance balance sheet accounts with no beginning balance and no activity for the selected period.
However, if I simply save that report as a Custom Report (without changing anything), reopening the custom report includes those zero-balance accounts again.
The old "Show" settings (such as Non-zero) are no longer available in the Modern General Ledger, so there doesn't appear to be a way to retain the standard report's behavior after saving.
I contacted QuickBooks Support, and they indicated that this is currently how Modern Reports work: the standard report applies the Non-zero behavior dynamically, but once saved as a custom report, only the saved customization settings are used—and there is no option to save the Non-zero behavior.
This is especially frustrating because I use Office Scripts to automate formatting of exported General Ledger reports. The script can handle a lot, but filtering out these extra accounts would require looping through the exported rows, making the automation more complex, slower, and more prone to breaking if the export format changes.
Has anyone found a better workaround, or is this simply a limitation of Modern Reports?
J
Julia Scott
One additional piece of feedback on the support experience: there were several responses that ended with my name, such as "Standard reports are different than custom reports, Julia" and "Balance sheet accounts are different than income statement accounts, Julia."
I realize the intent was probably to personalize the conversation, but in the context of repeatedly correcting or explaining something, ending those statements with my name came across as condescending. It felt less like a discussion between professionals and more like I was being talked down to.
My questions were about the behavior of the Modern General Ledger reports—not about basic accounting concepts. A more collaborative tone would have made the interaction much more productive.
The status was updated to
under review